The interrupted silver chain by the quarter-deck balustrade had now become continuous, and the balusters made a herringbone over their own motionless reflections. The spilt water from the pipkin had dried, and the pipkin was not to be seen. Abel Keeling stood beside the mast, erect as God made man to go. With his leathery hand he smote upon the bell. He waited for a space of a minute, and then cried:

  “Ahoy! . . . Ship ahoy! . . . What ship’s that?”

  III

  We are not conscious in a dream that we are playing a game the beginning and end of which are in ourselves. In this dream of Abel Keeling’s a voice replied:

  “Hallo, if s found its tongue . . . Ahoy there! What are you?”

  Loudly and in a clear voice Abel Keeling called: “Are you a ship?”

  With a nervous giggle the answer came:

  “We are a ship, aren’t we, Ward? I hardly feel sure . . . Yes, of course, were a ship. No question about us. The question is what the dickens you are.”

  Not all the words these voices used were intelligible to Abel Keeling, and he knew not what it was in the tone of these last words that reminded him of the honor due to the Mary of the Tower. Blister-white and at the end of her life as she was, Abel Keeling was still jealous of her dignity; the voice had a youngish ring; and it was not fitting that young chins should be wagged about his galleon. He spoke curtly.

  “You that spoke—are you the master of that ship?”

  “Officer of the watch,” the words floated back; “the captain’s below.”

  “Then send for him. It is with masters that masters hold speech,” Abel Keeling replied.

  He could see the two shapes, flat and without relief, standing on a high narrow structure with rails. One of them gave a low whistle, and seemed to be fanning his face; but the other rumbled something into a sort of funnel. Presently the two shapes became three. There was a murmuring, as of a consultation, and then suddenly a new voice spoke. At its thrill and tone a sudden tremor ran through Abel Keeling’s frame. He wondered what response it was that that voice found in the forgotten recesses of his memory . . .

  “Ahoy!” seemed to call this new yet faintly remembered voice. “What’s all this about? Listen. We’re His Majesty’s destroyer Seapink, out of Devonport last October, and nothing particular the matter with us. Now who are you?”

  “The Mary of the Tower, out of the Port of Rye on the day of Saint Anne, and only two men—”

  A gasp interrupted him.

  “Out of where?” that voice that so strangely moved Abel Keeling said unsteadily, while Bligh broke into groans of renewed rapture.

  “Out of the Port of Rye, in the Country of Sussex . . . nay, give ear, else I cannot make you hear me while this man’s spirit and flesh wrestle so together! . . . Ahoy! Are you gone?” For the voices had become a low murmur, and the ship shape had faded before Abel Keeling’s eyes. Again and again he called. He wished to be informed of the disposition and economy of the wind-chamber . . .

  “The wind-chamber!” he called, in an agony lest the knowledge almost within his grasp should be lost. “I would know about the wind-chamber . . .”

  Like an echo, there came back the words, uncomprehendingly uttered, “The wind-chamber? . . .”

  “. . . that driveth the vessel—perchance ’tis not wind—a steel bow that is bent also conserveth force—the force you store, to move at will through calm and storm. . .”

  “Can you make out what if s driving at!”

  “Oh, we shall all wake up in a minute . . .”

  “Quiet, I have it; the engines; it wants to know about our engines. It’ll be wanting to see our papers presently. Rye Port!

  . . . Well, no harm in humoring it; let’s see what it can make of this. Ahoy there!” came the voice to Abel Keeling, a little strongly, as if a shifting wind carried it, and speaking faster and faster as it went on. “Not wind, but steam; d’you hear? Steam, steam. Steam, in eight Yarrow water-tube boilers. S-t-e-a-m, steam. Got it? And we’ve twin-screw triple expansion engines, indicated horsepower four thousand, and we can do 430 revolutions per minute; savvy? Is there anything your phantomhood would like to know about our armament? . . .”

  Abel Keeling was muttering fretfully to himself. It annoyed him that words in his own vision should have no meaning for him. How did words come to him in a dream that he had no knowledge of when wide awake? The Seapink—that was the name of this ship; but a pink was long and narrow, low-cargoed, and square-built aft . . .

  “And as for our armament,” the voice with the tones that so profoundly troubled Abel Keeling’s memory continued, “we’ve two revolving Whitehead torpedo-tubes, three six-pounders on the upper deck, and that’s a twelve-pounder forward there by the conning-tower. I forgot to mention that we’re nickel steel, with a coal capacity of sixty tones in most damnably placed bunkers, and that thirty and a quarter knots is about our top. Care to come aboard?”

  But the voice was speaking still more rapidly and feverishly, as if to fill a silence with no matter what, and the shape that uttered it was straining forward anxiously over the rail.

  “Ugh! But I’m glad this happened in daylight,” another voice was muttering.

  “I wish I was sure it was happening at all . . . Poor old spook!”

  “I suppose it would keep its feet if her deck was quite vertical. Think she’ll go down, or just melt!”

  “Kind of go down . . . without wash . . .”

  “Listen—here’s the other one now—”

  For Bligh was singing again:

  For, Lord, Thou know’st our nature such

  If we great things obtain

  And in the getting of the same

  Do feel no grief or pain,

  We little do esteem thereof;

  But, hardly brought to pass,

  A thousand times we do esteem

  More than the other was.

  “But oh, look—look—look at the other! Oh, I say, wasn’t he a grand old boy! Look!”

  For, transfiguring Abel Keeling’s form as a prophet’s form is transfigured in the instant of his rapture, flooding his brain with the white eureka-light of perfect knowledge, that for which he and his dream had been at a standstill had come. He knew her, this ship of the future, as if God’s Finger had bitten her lines into his brain. He knew her as those already sinking into the grave know things, miraculously, completely, accepting Life’s impossibilities with a nodded “Of course.” From the ardent mouths of her eight furnaces to the last drip from her lubricators, from her bedplates to the breeches of her quick-firers, he knew her—read her gauges, thumbed her bearings, gave the ranges from her range-finders, and lived the life he lived who was in command of her. And he would not forget on the morrow, as he had forgotten so many morrows, for at last he had seen the water about his feet, and knew that there would be no morrow for him in this world . . .

  And even in that moment, with but a sand or two to run in his glass, indomitable, insatiable, dreaming dream on dream, he could not die until he knew more. He had two questions to ask, and a master-question; and but a moment remained. Sharply his voice rang out.

  “Ho, there! . . . This ancient ship, the Mary of the Tower, cannot steam thirty and a quarter knots, but yet she can sail the waters. What more does your ship? Can she soar above them, as the fowls of the air soar?”

  “Lord, he thinks we’re an aeroplane! . . . No, she can’t. . .”

  “And you can dive, even as the fishes of the deep?”

  “No . . . Those are submarines . . . we aren’t a submarine. . .”

  But Abel Keeling waited for no more. He gave an exulting chuckle.

  “Oho, oho—thirty knots, and but on the face of the waters—no more than that? Oho! . . . Now my ship, the ship I see as a mother sees full-grown the child she has but conceived—my ship I say—oho, my ship . . . Below there, trip that gun!”

  The cry came suddenly and alertly, as a muffled sound came from below and an ominous tremor shook the galleon.

  “By Jove, her guns are breaking loose below—that’s her finish—”

  “Trip that gun, and double-breech the others!” Abel Keeling’s voice rang out, as if there had been any to obey him. He had braced himself within the belfry frame; and then in the middle of the next order his voice suddenly failed him. His ship shape, that for the moment he had forgotten, rode once more before his eyes. This was the end, and his master-question, apprehension for the answer to which was now torturing his face and well nigh bursting his heart, was still unasked.

  “Ho—he that spoke with me—the master,” he cried in a voice that ran high, “is he there?”

  “Yes, yes,” came the other voice across the water, sick with suspense. “Oh, be quick!”

  There was a moment in which hoarse cries from many voices, a heavy thud and rumble on wood, and a crash of timbers and a gurgle and a splash were indescribably mingled; the gun under which Abel Keeling had lain had snapped her rotten breechings and plunged down the deck, carrying Bligh’s unconscious form with it. The deck came up vertical, and for one instant longer Abel Keeling clung to the belfry.

  “I cannot see your face,” he screamed, “but meseems your voice is a voice I know. What is your name?”

  “Keeling—Abel Keeling—oh, my God!”

  And Abel Keeling’s cry of triumph, that mounted to a victorious “Huzza!” was lost in the downward plunge of the Mary of the Tower, that left the strait empty save for the sun’s fiery blaze and the last smoke-like evaporation of the mists.

  Trips

  ROBERT SILVERBERG

  One of the favorite concepts of science-fiction writers is that of the alternate universe—the notion that an infinity of worlds similar to ours lies just beyond our reach, across some barrier of dimensions. If we could only reach some of those worlds, what strangeness, what wonders, what novelties we would behold! It is a lovely fantasy, impossible to prove or disprove. What would it be like to make a voyage through the universes adjoining our own? Togo onward, ever onward, through world after world, each one somewhat like our own, and yet so different, so very different . . .

  Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere . . . Does this path have a heart?

  If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life.

  —The Teachings of Don Juan

  I

  The second place you come to—the first having proved unsatisfactory, for one reason and another—is a city which could almost be San Francisco. Perhaps it is, sitting out there on the peninsula between the ocean and the bay, white buildings clambering over improbably steep hills. It occupies the place in your psychic space that San Francisco has always occupied, although you don’t really know yet what this city calls itself. Perhaps you’ll find out before long.

  You go forward. What you feel first is the strangeness of the familiar, and then the utter heartless familiarity of the strange. For example the automobiles, and there are plenty of them, are all halftracks: low sleek sexy sedans that have the flashy Detroit styling, the usual chrome, the usual streamlining, the low-raked windows all agleam, but there are only two wheels, both of them in front, with a pair of tread-belts circling endlessly in back. Is this good design for city use? Who knows? Somebody evidently thinks so, here. And then the newspapers: the format is the same, narrow columns, gaudy screaming headlines, miles of black type on coarse grayish-white paper, but the names and the places have been changed. You scan the front page of a newspaper in the window of a curbside vending machine. Big photo of Chairman DeGrasse, serving as host at a reception for the Patagonian Ambassador. An account of the tribal massacres in the highlands of Dzungaria. Details of the solitude epidemic that is devastating Persepolis. When the halftracks stall on the hillsides, which is often, the other drivers ring silvery chimes, politely venting their impatience. Men who look like Navahos chant what sound like sutras in the intersections. The traffic lights are blue and orange. Clothing tends toward the prosaic, grays and dark blues, but the cut and slope of men’s jackets has an angular, formal eighteenth-century look, verging on pomposity. You pick up a bright coin that lies in the street: it is vaguely metallic but rubbery, as if you could compress it between your fingers, and its thick edges bear incuse lettering: TO GOD WE OWE OUR SWORDS. On the next block a squat two-story building is ablaze, and agitated clerks do a desperate dance. The fire engine is glossy green and its pump looks like a diabolical cannon embellished with sweeping flanges; it spouts a glistening yellow foam that eats the flames and, oxidizing, runs off down the gutter, a trickle of sluggish blue fluid. Everyone wears eyeglasses here, everyone. At a sidewalk cafe, pale waitresses offer mugs of boiling-hot milk into which the silent tight-faced patrons put cinnamon, mustard, and what seems to be Tabasco sauce. You offer your coin and try a sample, imitating what they do, and everyone bursts into laughter. The girl behind the counter pushes a thick stack of paper currency at you by way of change: UNITED FEDERAL COLUMBIAN REPUBLIC, each bill declares. GOOD FOR ONE EXCHANGE. Illegible signatures. Portrait of early leader of the republic, so famous that they-give him no label of identification, bewigged, wall-eyed, ecstatic. You sip your milk, blowing gently. A light scum begins to form on its speckled surface. Sirens start to wail. About you, the other milk-drinkers stir uneasily. A parade is coming. Trumpets, drums, far-off chanting. Look! Four naked boys carry an open brocaded litter on which there sits an immense block of ice, a great frosted cube, mysterious, impenetrable. “Patagonia!” the onlookers cry sadly. The word is wrenched from them: “Patagonia!” Next, marching by himself, a mitred bishop advances, all in green, curtseying to the crowd, tossing hearty blessings as though they were flowers. “Forget your sins! Cancel your debts! All is made new! All is good!” You shiver and peer intently into his eyes as he passes you, hoping that he will single you out for an embrace. He is terribly tall but white-haired and fragile, somehow, despite his agility and energy. He reminds you of Norman, your wife’s older brother, and perhaps he is Norman, the Norman of this place, and you wonder if he can give you news of Elizabeth, the Elizabeth of this place, but you say nothing and he goes by. And then comes a tremendous wooden scaffold on wheels, a true juggernaut, at the summit of which rests a polished statue carved out of gleaming black stone: a human figure, male, plump, arms intricately folded, face complacent. The statue emanates a sense of vast Sumerian calm. The face is that of Chairman DeGrasse. “He’ll die in the first blizzard,” murmurs a man to your left. Another, turning suddenly, says with great force, “No, it’s going to be done the proper way. He’ll last until the time of the accidents, just as he’s supposed to. I’ll bet on that.” Instantly they are nose to nose, glaring, and then they are wagering—a tense complicated ritual involving slapping of palms, interchanges of slips of paper, formal voiding of spittle, hysterical appeals to witnesses. The emotional climate here seems a trifle too intense. You decide to move along. Warily you leave the cafe, looking in all directions.

  II

  Before you began your travels you were told how essential it was to define your intended role. Were you going to be a tourist, or an explorer, or an infiltrator? Those are the choices that confront anyone arriving at a new place. Each bears its special risks.

  To opt for being a tourist is to choose the easiest but most contemptible path; ultimately it’s the most dangerous one, too, in a certain sense. You have to accept the built-in epithets that go with the part: they will think of you as a foolish tourist, an ignorant tourist, a vulgar tourist, a mere tourist. Do you want to be considered mere? Are you able to accept that? Is that really your preferred self-image—baffled, bewildered, led about by the nose? You’ll sign up for packaged tours, you’ll carry guidebooks and cameras, you’ll go to the cathedral and the museums and the marketplace, and you’ll remain always on the outside of things, seeing a great deal, experiencing nothing. What a waste! You will be diminished by the very traveling that you thought would expand you. Tourism hollows and parches you. All places become one: a hotel, a smiling swarthy sunglassed guide, a bus, a plaza, a fountain, a marketplace, a museum, a cathedral. You are transformed into a feeble shriveled thing made out of glued-together travel folders; you are naked but for your visas; the sum of your life’s adventures is a box of left-over small change from many indistinguishable lands.

  To be an explorer is to make the macho choice. You swagger in, bent on conquest, for isn’t any discovery a kind of conquest? Your existential position, like that of any mere tourist, lies outside the heart of things, but you are unashamed of that; and while tourists are essentially passive, the explorer’s role is active; an explorer intends to grasp that heart, take possession, squeeze. In the explorer’s role you consciously cloak yourself in the trappings of power: self-assurance, thick bankroll, stack of credit cards. You capitalize on the glamour of being a stranger. Your curiosity is invincible; you ask unabashed questions about the most intimate things, never for an instant relinquishing eye-contact. You open locked doors and flash bright lights into curtained rooms. You are Magellan; you are Malinowski; you are Captain Cook. You will gain much, but—ah, here is the price!—you will always be feared and hated, you will never be permitted to attain the true core. Nor is superficiality the worst peril. Remember that Magellan and Captain Cook left their bones on tropic beaches. Sometimes the natives lose patience with explorers.

  The infiltrator, though? His is at once the most difficult role and the most rewarding one. Will it be yours? Consider. You’ll have to get right with it when you reach your destination, instantly learn the regulations, find your way around like an old hand, discover the location of shops and freeways and hotels, figure out the units of currency, the rules of social intercourse—all of this knowledge mastered surreptitiously, through observation alone, while moving about silently, camouflaged, never asking for help. You must become a part of the world you have entered, and the way to do it is to encourage a general assumption that you already are a part of it, have always been a part of it. Wherever you land, you need to recognize that life has been going on for millions of years, life goes on there steadily, with you or without you; you are the intrusive one, and if you don’t want to feel intrusive you’d better learn fast how to fit in. Of course it isn’t easy. The infiltrator doesn’t have the privilege of buying stability by acting dumb. You won’t be able to say, “How much does it cost to ride on the cable-car?” You won’t be able to say, “I’m from somewhere else, and this is the kind of money I carry, dollars quarters pennies halves nickels, is any of it legal tender here?” You don’t dare identify yourself in any way as an outsider. If you don’t get the idioms or the accent right, you can tell them you grew up out of town, but that’s as much as you can reveal. The truth is your eternal secret, even when you’re in trouble, especially when you’re in trouble. When your back’s to the wall you won’t have time to say, “Look, I wasn’t bom in this universe at all, you see, I came zipping in from some other place, so pardon me, forgive me, excuse me, pity me.” No, no, no, you can’t do that. They won’t believe you, and even if they do, they’ll make it all the worse for you once they know. If you want to infiltrate, Cameron, you’ve got to fake it all the way. Jaunty smile, steely even gaze. And you have to infiltrate. You know that, don’t you? You don’t really have any choice.